The modern film world is one filled with excess, and I'm not just talking about manufactured Hollywood block-busters. No there is even a large amount of excess in films that are more "artistic" if you will. And I want to be clear, that is not necessarily a bad thing, several films recent films have done wonders with just the concept of excess beyond reason, like The Wolf of Wall Street for example. But I do feel like something has been lost in the film world, a certain subtly that filled the films of Bergman and Ozu. A restraint that served to exemplify the characters and their struggles. Luckily there are some contemporary directors that are trying to continue this subtlety, and one of those directors is Ming-Liang Tsai.Stray Dogs is the most recent film by Ming-Liang Tsai, and well Stray Dogs doesn't have a plot, at least not the conventional sense. The film instead follows the lives of a few different characters, and tries to capture them as they are. The film brings the audience close to these characters and let's the audience understand them for what they are. To say that Stray Dogs takes its time is an understatement, every single scene in the film is slow and is stretched to the very limit of filmmaking. And believe me when I say that the scenes are at their limits. There are two scenes in the film that go on for so long that it exceeded not only anything else I had seen in any film, but they exceeded anything I thought possible. There is something very hypnotic about these scenes, Ming-Liang Tsai forces the audience to just stare at these characters for minutes on end as we soak in their facial expressions and slowly become one with them. It is something that is truly gorgeous and needs to be seen to be understood.If the actors in Stray Dogs were bad or even just average the film would be completely unwatchable, but luckily for us they are all fantastic. Especially Kang-sheng Lee, who plays the father of a small homeless family. (Kang-sheng Lee worked with Ming Liang-Tsai on several of his films.) He gives one of the most enduring and real performances I have ever seen. Another thing that's needs to be great for the film to work is the cinematography, which is also fantastic. The film is shot in a very matter-of-fact way, things are just shown as they are. The camera only a moves a handful amount of times in a film that's over two hours long. And the colors and lighting are just wonderful. Overall Stray Dogs is one of the most refreshing films I've seen in a long time, and if you think you can handle a really, really slow paced film, with a very unconventional narrative structure. I would highly recommend Stray Dogs.8.6

Most of the time when we go to see a movie, what we look for is to be entertained. So by definition those movies are entertainment. The people who make those movies, even though they call themselves artists, are actually entertainers. We look for self recognition, relaxation, amusement,... Yes, entertainment. We are used to being fed plots and emotion quickly. But some movies are actually art, and the movie makers, are truly artists. They do not entertain, they educate. They do not entertain, they inspire. They do not entertain, they lead. This is one of those movies, it is basically about desperate poor and unimportant people's life under microscope. Not an unusual story but It is told in a very distinctive and unconventional way. The director once said, why does a movie have to to have a story with beginning, peak and ending? Why does a scene have to have something happen? Weird, right? Yet if we open ourselves to the possibility that there is not a fixed way to make a movie, we may be returned to the original stage of our senses, while we were much softer and sensitive as we Do not have a box in our head. There are A lot of long takes. Some I like, some I do not, the funny thing is, when I am determined to be open and not anxiously waiting for some big movement in the scene, I find those long takes sometimes not long enough. Because I now feel the emotion of the character and my emotion flows with the scene, but the take cut short before I can switch. This is really a brand new experience. I won't talk about the splendid performance and the black humor in the move, if you are patient and open you will find them yourselves, as long as you are the kind of audience who enjoy art, in addition to entertainment.

Tsai Ming-Liangs film Stray Dogs falls a bit short of being a great film but its not a disappointing one either. An existential and slow paced character study of a homeless drunk father and his two children living as the titles says "Stray Dogs". The films story reflects the desperation and misery of being homeless and a supermarket worker who becomes fond of the children and tries to rescue them from there misery. Downfall of the film is the careless editing of the long meandering scenes that seems to wear out there welcome after two minutes. This film could have been a great one if it only ran under two hours or less.

Being a student of film, heard a lot about Tsai ming Liyang in my institute. Actually heard many good reviews about his other film 'The Whole'. Then I went to see the movie 'Stray Dogs' at the Kolkata International Film Festival 2013. And believe me, it gave me pain.Now if you consider the last sentence of the above paragraph as a positive one, then you would be wrong. The story of a deceased family, who find it difficult to manage their daily living food is said in such a way, at a point it seemed boring.There are obviously master touch in showing the feeling of the father.specially with the cabbage sequence, it seemed as a melancholic poetry.But then, what happened to the family, were they in distress from the very beginning, is not very clear. Mainly the background of the characters is the thing that lacks in the film.That's why the credibility of the characters comes to question sometimes.And then comes the length of the shots.Wallah....Had this film been shot in 35 mm film, I don't know whether this structure of film could have been achieved or not. Only because someone has the benefit of digital film making, that doesn't give anyone the liberty to test the patience of the audience I reckon. (Spoiler) I don't know whether it would be a spoiler or not, but I have to say, the last two shots of the films are so long, that it seemed at a point, that this film is never ending. Even with this structure, this film could have been 25-30 minutes shorter.At the end I can only say, a very good prospect and possibility of telling a good story has been lost, with some rare touchy treatments..